Developmental Psych Flashcards
What kinds of questions would be of interest to Developmental Psychologists?
Income and racial/ethnic inequality and their effects on human development, health, and longevity
Achievement gap/opportunity gap
Adversity
How much and how do experiences during childhood and adolescence constrain/influence one’s life course
What is meant by a “cells to society” approach?
Microsystem (what directs directly with the individual) → ecosystem (outside the family) → macrosystem (attitudes and ideologies of culture)
Mesosystem = how the microsystem and ecosystem interact with each other
Chronosystem = time (sociohistorical, conditions and time since life events)
What is meant by “bidirectional influences” in developmental psychology?
Genes influence your organ systems and your social experiences and your social experiences feedback and influence your genes
a relationship in both directions over two time points
example = parenting
What kind of measures do developmental psychologists use?
Molecular level data: genes, epigenetics
Systems level: neuroimaging, hormones
Behavioral level - individual - observations, questionnaires, responses to tasks/test
Behavioral level - interactions among dyads, triads, groups
School and neighborhood level
National, cultural levels
how does SES (Social & Economic Status) of parents affect the size of children’s vocabulary?
Barrier to achievement gap starts early
Across the spectrum of parents talking with their children, it was more education not SES
16-24 months = the burst of language learning
By 36 months, those with higher SES have a higher cumulative vocabulary (words)
with low-income Spanish Speaking families, what was the relationship between the number of words that you heard at the age of 19 months and the speed of processing language at 24 months?
The more words they were hearing, the more quickly they processed it
Environment, not socioeconomic status that was making a difference
What is the Post-Hoc fallacy?
one event is said to be the cause of a later event simply because it occurred earlier
What is the relationship between social class and brain development?
Brain development and social class have a positive relationship with each other
Gap between social class and brain development increase with age (the older you get, the more social class matters in brain development)
How does family income have an effect on the size of a child’s hippocampus
Higher income to needs
Aspects of parenting have a significant impact on mediating the hippocampus
What is the Chicago Longitudinal Study? What were the effects of the intervention on school readiness? Repeating a grade? Completing High School?
Comprehensive program: preschool, family services, parent involvement beginning age 3 and through 3rd grade
Kids are now 30 years old, beginning to track health and educational outcomes
Kids who got the intervention increased the number who were school ready, less had to repeat grades, and more completed high school than the control group
What are the biggest drivers for return on investment in the chicago study
taxes from the fact that the intervention kids are holding down jobs better
and reduced cost of in jail or prison
What is attachment and when does attachment develop?
Categorized by secure base behavior and resisting separation
Directs the baby to seek proximity with attachment figures
(Especially when sick, tired or scared)
What does the Attatchment Theory predict
secure attachment in infancy will be associated with…
Higher self esteem and confidence
Better relationships with peers and social competence
Trusting relationships with teachers, not needy
Better and more secure adult romantic relationships more trusting and more equitable
argues that the quality/security of parent-infant attachment forms the working model from which children’s later intimate relationship with others emerges
Securely attached infants should become individuals who have better, higher quality relationships with peers
What is imprinting
a behavioral trait when hours after being born you develop an extremely close bond with the people you first meets, usually your parents
What is Konrad Lorenz best known for?
founding fathers of the field of ethology, the study of animal behavior
He is best known for his research of the principle of attachment, or imprinting
What is the strange situation? What were the results?
a semi-structured laboratory procedure that allows us to identify, without lengthy home observation, infants who effectively use a primary caregiver as a secure base
Result:
Sensitive mothers are more likely to have securely attached children. In contrast, mothers who are less sensitive towards their child, for example, those who respond to the child’s needs incorrectly or who are impatient or ignore the child, are likely to have insecurely attached children
What is the strange situation? What were the results?
a semi-structured laboratory procedure that allows us to identify, without lengthy home observation, infants who effectively use a primary caregiver as a secure base
Result:
Sensitive mothers are more likely to have securely attached children. In contrast, mothers who are less sensitive towards their child, for example, those who respond to the child’s needs incorrectly or who are impatient or ignore the child, are likely to have insecurely attached children
What are the stages/types of play
Unoccupied
Solitary
Onlooker behavior
Parallel play adjacent play, social coaction
Associative play (run and chase)
Cooperative play (tag your it.. rules)
What is a meta-analysis
A subset of systematic reviews
finding similar studies and put together their results
effect size weighted by size of the sample
What is a meta-analysis
A subset of systematic reviews
finding similar studies and put together their results
effect size weighted by size of the sample
What does meta-analysis suggest about the association between infant attachment and the quality of children’s peer relationships?
children who are more securely attached will have wider, more quality relationships with peers
Why does the relationship between secure relationships and peer relations increase with time?
You build trust through time which strengthens relationships
How do friendships change over time?
Reciprocal “friends” emerge in preschool
Friendships are not very enduring until adolescents and young adulthood
As you get older, friendships become more who you can trust and tell private, personal things
What does it mean to be neglected (social status)
few kids like or dislike you (like you are not there)
What does it mean to be rejected (social status)
few kids like you, many dislike you
What does it mean to be bullied (social status)
picked on by other kids, but does not mean you are rejected or neglected, some bullied kids are also bullies themselves
Does being the victim of bullying increase a child’s problems
yes, being a victim of bullying increases your problems, over and above what you had before you were bullied
What relationship do researchers find between teen romantic relationships and adult romantic relationships?
Romantic relationship quality as a teen predict adult romantic relationships, association goes away when control for social and academic competence
Lots of romantic partners in adolescence predicts poorer quality romantic relationships in adulthood
What were some of the beliefs that Piaget had about kids?
Piaget proposed a grand theory of intellectual development that viewed children as actively constructing knowledge through interaction with their environments
Children are inherently curious and seek stimulation
Development results from the interaction between the biologically prepared child and his or her environment
What is the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development?
0-2 years
The infant explores the world through direct sensory and motor contact
Object permanence and separation anxiety develop during this stage
Some changes going on all the time
What is the preoperational stage of cognitive development?
2-6 years
The child uses symbols (words and images) to represent objects but does not reason logically
Child has the ability to pretend
Child is egocentric
What is the concrete operational stage of cognitive development?
7-12 years
The child can think logically about concrete objects and can thus add and subtract
Child understands conservation
What is the formal operational stage of cognitive development?
12 years-adult
The adolescent can reason abstractly and think in hypothetical terms
What is object permanence and when does it develop?
Occurs from 8-12 months of age
Object permanence is the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when not in view
Why does the A-not-B task occur?
lack of object permanence and inhibitory control
According to Rene Baillargeon, what do babies understand about objects by about 3.5 months?
Babies and 3.5 months old already understand something about the properties of objects (object permanence)
Relative size, solidity, gravity, occlusion, etc
Proves that piaget’s timeline about object permanence is slightly off
How do younger vs. older kids perform on conservation tasks?
Older kids perform better on conservation tasks
Younger children tend to focus exclusively on one dimension and ignore or disregard others
Older children can consider and coordinate multiple dimensions simultaneously
What is centration?
Piaget called the focus on a single dimension centration
What does the Wynn task suggest?
such studies do suggest that infants may understand some aspects of number and quantity much earlier than piaget believed
Although actions on objects do become progressively coordinated over time, infants seem to understand things about the number of objects before much of this action coordination takes place
What is the theory of mind?
The understanding that others can have knowledge, beliefs, desires, intentions, or perspectives that differ from one’s own
Self as distinct from other
Mental state language
Reasoning about mental states
What is a false belief task?
Shows M&M box, but there are really pencils in the box
Prior to opening asked what do you think is in this box
After opening asked what is really in this box, what did you think was in the box before you opened it and david hasn’t seen this box yet (what will david think is in the box before he opens it
Younger kids get stuck on what they know to be true, and can’t get past their prior mental state
Once they see what is actually in the box, they will say they always knew what was in the box even if they got the answer wrong initially
What are different reasons for false belief failures?
Egocentrism, Task demands, weak inhibitory control, and language development
Who was Donald T
An autism patient who had rigid adherence to routines along with verbal rituals and impaired linguistic pragmatics
What are two pieces of evidence that autism may have a biological basis
The relationship between seizure disorders and autistic individuals (Brain disorder, Rimland)
The concordance rates between fraternal/identical twins (heritability, Folstein & Rutter)
What is Nosology
the branch of medical science dealing with the classification of diseases
Etiology
Pathogenesis
Signs and symptoms
What are the differences between the classification of autism and autistic spectrum disorders in the DSM-IV and the DSM-V
The DSM-IV classifies autism/autistic spectrum disorders as pervasive developmental disorders. Criteria are: social impairments, communication deficits, and stereotyped interests and rigid/repetitive behavior
The DSM-V classifies autism/autistic spectrum disorders as autism spectrum disorders. Criteria include: persistent deficits in social communication, and restricted/repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.
What are the diagnostic symptoms of autism?
Impaired social communication interaction and restricted/repetitive behavior
What are the associated features of autism?
Sex ratio ~ 4:1 male to female
Intellectual disability ~30% of all autism cases associated with intellectual disability (IQ < 70 and documented functional impairment
Seizure disorders ~ 20-30% of all autism cases
Comorbid conditions
Savant skills <1% of all autism cases
What do epidemiologists mean by incidence and prevalence?
Prevalence = A count (proportion/percentage) of the total number of people with a specific disease in a given population at a given time
Incidence = An index (usually rate) or the total number of new cases identified within a given population during a specified time
Why the increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism?
Greater public awareness
Better case ascertainment
Lower age at diagnosis
Diagnostic substitution
Changes in diagnostic criteria
Is Autism heterogeneous or homogeneous?
Heterogeneous
Results from autism studies
No overt behavior markers of autism at 6 months of age
Bx risk markers at 12 months
Autism is not a singular phenomenon
Understanding patterns of brain and behavioral development in early life will inform early identification and early intervention, and may potentially inform future efforts of strategic prevention
What is a cross-sectional study
a type of research design in which you collect data from many different individuals at a single point in time
What is a longitudinal study
you repeatedly collect data from the same sample over an extended period of time
What is a cohort and its effects
a cohort is a group of people who share common characteristics or experiences
A cohort effect occurs when a research result is impacted by the characteristics of the cohort(s) being studied
What are teratogens
a substance that can cause abnormalities or birth defects in a developing fetus
How are assimilation and accommodation different
Assimilation is a process of adaptation by which new knowledge is taken into the pre-existing schema
Accommodation is a process of adaptation by which the pre-existing schema is altered in order to fit in the new knowledge
What is a schema
a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information
What are Baumrind’s parenting styles
permissive, authoritative, neglectful and authoritarian
What is Kohlberg’s model of moral development
suggested that people move through the three levels of moral reasoning (preconventional, conventional, and postconventional) in a fixed order, and that moral understanding is linked to cognitive development
